Surgery, whether of the spine or other areas of the body, is often complex and routinely involves the need for highly experienced medical staff, in addition to well-designed and well-manufactured implants, made to exacting specifications. Often the implants take the form of various types of hardware. At times, this hardware includes polyaxial pedicle screws that may allow angulation in various degrees of freedom between the movable screw head and the screw itself. Such screws may have a spherical head which is attached to a bone screw, and is captured somewhere within the moveable head. Conventionally, a bone screw head may be pushed through a lower opening of a screw head by excess compression force transferred from a locking element. This excess compression force may result in failure of the screw head/bone screw interface, and may result in a loss of fixation of the bone screw. The described invention aims to limit the compression force from the locking element to prevent this failure and provide a more circumferential lock between the bone screw/screw head interface.